Please, Don’t Settle For Someone You Weren’t Supposed To Be With

Two years ago, I was an emotional wreck. Life had hit me so hard that I thought I would never experience such pain in my life. I decided that I couldn’t keep on living like that. I decided that no one was more important in my life than myself.

You know, that was one of those moments when you have an epiphany and you promise yourself that you’re never going to make the same mistake twice. That was the kind of moment when you see everything clearly and you know exactly what to do and how to do it. Your whole life was planned. Too bad these moments disappear fast and your life gets back on the same track and it’s like you’ve forgotten all that has happened to you until it happens again, until it hurts again. And you start all over again, another promise to yourself and another resolution and the hope that things will work out for the better.

So, in that spirit and in my sudden enlightenment caused by an enormous amount of pain and abandonment, I wrote on a piece of paper: “Never settle for someone you weren’t supposed to be with!” and I stuck it up on a wall in my bedroom, so every morning I get up, I can see my own message to myself.

The euphoria lasted for a few days. I decided to turn my life around. I really solely swore to myself that I was taking control of my life, to not chase men who don’t value or want me, to put a stop to wanting love so badly that I would take even something that looked like love, but which would only hurt me in the end.

That piece of paper really got me out of the mess I was in. But, as I said, these things don’t last for that long. As soon as your life gets back on track, you find yourself in the same situation as before. So was I, in an identical situation to two years earlier. Nothing had changed except I was two years older.

Whenever I got up in the morning or walked into my room, I would see the paper on the wall with my own words. I had written it as a warning for the future. I felt so guilty. I felt like I had betrayed myself. And indeed I had.

I even pretended the paper wasn’t there. I pretended I never wrote it because I hoped it wouldn’t haunt me. I hoped it would go away. But it never did. I knew what I had written even without looking at the wall. I knew how I had felt two years prior and sadly I knew I was going to feel that way again and I did nothing to prevent that.
So, the day had come a few months ago when that horrible feeling of abandonment struck me once again. I’d hit rock bottom and it felt so familiar. All that pain from the last time returned in combination with the new pain I was feeling. I felt even worse. I cried in my best friend’s lap, with a decent amount of alcohol in me, cursing at everything and everyone.

I was asking her why the guy I was in love with didn’t care for me as much as I cared for him. Why wasn’t I good enough for him? At that moment, I realized I had returned to that point from two years earlier. I realized that nothing had changed despite that piece of paper on the wall. I hadn’t changed and until I realize that I’m better than those men who have treated me like shit, everything will stay the same.

At that moment I realized the true meaning behind that piece of paper on the wall.

I realized that I had to let him go because we were not meant for each other. God hadn’t intended for me to be with him and I couldn’t force it. That’s why I was so miserable. I wanted to love so badly that I forced myself into settling for someone I was not meant to be with. It sucks to let go of somebody. It sucks to give up on the friendship you had but that is the only way to realize your worth and to move on and prepare yourself for the real thing.

I did it, I cut him loose, but I secretly hoped that he’d call me back. I hoped that he’d realize how much he loved me. So I continued staring at the empty screen of my phone, waiting for it to buzz with a text from him.

I know that waiting for the right one to come along is hard. I know it’s exhausting and after some time you even stop believing he will ever show up. But I also know that waiting is worth it. It’s worth it if that love I’m waiting for is the real kind of love. If it’s the love I deserve, a love which I will never regret or cry over, then I will wait. I won’t settle and please, don’t you settle either. Don’t settle for just one small bit of happiness because there is a whole lifetime of it that waits for you.